~ Thinking outside the box about Cambodia

A Pause for Thought/Une Pause de Réflexion

You are without a doubt aware of Monday 8 June’s news in the City of Tonlé Buon Mouk.

As it happened, the aftermath of it would for sure create ramifications and consequences or even crisis on the constitution, politics and institutions in Cambodia. You may also recall the column “Ad interim” posted on Monday 19 February 2015.

Let’s keep politics out of the picture for a moment, and let’s have a pause for thought – even concern, as always for Cambodia – with this passage that Marcus Aurelius wrote in “Meditations” (Book II, paragraph 14):

“14. Even if you were going to live three thousand years, and even ten thousand times that, still remember that no man loses any life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so what is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can anyone take this from him? These two things then you must bear in mind: the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come around in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that he who lives longest and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose something he does not already possess.”